Study of the issues of limitations of current aircraft carriers and across sea mobility of tank group generated the present invention.
The first issue is about limitations of current aircraft carriers.
Mobile sea surface airports will be widely used in the future, along with predictable tremendous increase of human activity on sea surface in the future, which covers about seventy percent of the earth's surface. Today's aircraft carriers are not suitable for the main form of future mobile sea surface airports because of the following restrictions.
1. The structures and shapes of today's aircraft carriers are only suited for specifically designed airplanes. Most of today's airplanes that include commercial airplanes, military airplanes without specific apparatus and, specifically, large size airplanes can not use today's aircraft carriers. PA1 2. The structures and shapes of today's aircraft carriers are hardly changeable after the aircraft carriers are built. New designs of the future airplanes that would be carried by aircraft carriers are subject to this disadvantageous restriction. PA1 3. The structures and shapes of today's aircraft carriers require that the aircraft carriers must be built at very limited locations. This limitation is a very significant obstacle for competition and mass production. PA1 4. The structures and shapes of today's aircraft carriers make maintenance and repair of these aircraft carriers complicated and expensive. PA1 1. A today's ship that can transport a large number of tanks across sea depends on specific ports to load and unload these tanks. It lacks capacity of direct amphibious landing. A today's landing ship lacks capability of carrying a large number of tanks across sea. The lack of capacity of quick delivery of large-scale tank group from any seashore point to any seashore point across sea is a significant restriction on the use of large-scale tank group in the missions across sea. PA1 2. A today's ship that can transport a large number of tanks across sea lacks the survivability that can match the survivability of the tank group on ground when the ship is under attack on sea surface. A few powerful missiles or bombs could sink the ship. Vulnerableness of the ship makes high survivability of the tank group on ground meaningless on sea surface. PA1 3. A today's ship that can transport a large number of tanks across sea significantly restrains realization of fighting capability of these tanks on sea surface. In the ship, a tank is processed as a transported unit instead of a fighting unit. The valuable striking power of the tank group is wasted on sea surface.
The second issue is about across sea mobility of tank group, including realization of striking power of heavy ground weapons on sea surface.
A group of tanks are very powerful in today's ground wars. However, today's ships that carry these tanks across sea generate the following concerns.
The concerns above relate to very different fields. A common solution for all the concerns above has not been found in publication. Searching a common solution of all the concerns in the above two issues generated the following inventions.